365 T-shirts - the reasoning

This blog should be sub-titled: a journal of my life in geek.

I get my geek on with things about which I am geeky: comic books, Baseball, Ultimate, science fiction, my favorite bands, books I have read and loved, and Jungian psychology to name some of the most frequently traversed subjects.

I began this project simply as a way to count my T-shirts. I own a lot of T-shirts. But how many do I have? Do I have 365? We shall find out.

When I started this blog, I thought about how each T-shirt means something to me. I bought it for a reason, after all. I set myself the task to post an entry about a new T-shirt every day as a way to simply write something every day, a warm up for writing fiction, which is my passion. Writing is like exercise. Warm ups are good for exercise. But after completing a month of blogging about T-shirts, I have learned that this blog serves as a journal; it documents my life in geek, sort of a tour of my interests in pop culture. The blog serves as a tool for self-inventory, for assessment and analysis of self and the origins of self, for stepping through the process of individuation in catalogues, lists, and ranks.

The blog also made me aware that I have some serious gaps in my T-shirt ownership, and I am in the process of collecting some new T-shirts for several of the great popular culture icons that I truly love. Stay tuned.

I was also a bit surprised that people checked out my blog and continue to check it, read it, and even comment on it. I am very appreciative of this readership. Please feel free to share your thoughts in my comments section. I will respond.

Also, please note that I have moved the original introductory text to the side bar. And now, I present to you the most recent entry of 365 T-shirts: a journal of my life in geek. Thank you for reading.

Friday, January 24, 2014

Today's shirt is another gift from my father from the years that TPTA participated in the local Corporate Olympics. I have two, so expect to see another.

Not much to say, hence the ...

HIATUS TEXT: I am taking a short hiatus. A "hiatus" for the 365 T-shirts Blog does not mean that there will not be shirts or that I will skip posting on any forthcoming day. There will be shirts. But the shirts will not be exciting or the featured shirts will not require me to write a small novel to properly generate the content I feel is sufficient. I created a category for my hiatus so as to group together those "easy" shirts that I consider to be "hiatus shirts." The goal of the hiatus is to fill in many blog days with easy shirts in order to complete longer love letters to beloved popular culture icons on more special shirts and to write more complex entries AHEAD OF TIME. The daily grind is becoming too much and causing me to fall behind and to be forced to post incomplete entries. I am hoping that a series of hiatus shirts will allow me to catch up, get ahead, and stay ahead. Ideally, I would like to be writing the bulk of each entry three days ahead while always working on at least one other. I have a lot of great shirts to share before the end of my blog year (after all I was just given SIXTEEN shirts for my birthday). Stay tuned. I promise to post the more interesting and longer T-shirt entries as I finish them. Thanks for reading. BTW, this is the standard HIATUS TEXT that I will include in every "hiatus shirt" entry.

Have we established that I am not always wearing the shirt I am featuring that day? Below I have assembled seven images of the shirts I have worn this week, including the one I am wearing right now (the United Federation of Planets Logo).

Perhaps, this is interesting...

Maybe I will do this kind of thing more often.

THIS WEEK'S SHIRTS

WHY T-SHIRTS EXPLANATORY BLURB

I am doing a series of snippets that will add up to a larger whole answering the "Why T-shirts?" or "What's with all the T-shirts?" question. I have also decided to include the previous items in an ever growing list, hence the "previous items" section next.

PREVIOUS ITEMS#1: T-SHIRTS ARE COOL

TODAY'S ITEM - WHY T-SHIRTS #2: I BE BRANDED - CHOOSING TO ADVERTISE

When I taught media studies, I taught from a book called No Logo, in which the author, "took aim at the brand bullies" and discusses the impact of brand-oriented corporate activity and the ways in which people have chosen to fight back, such as Culture Jamming.

Since I was in a different T-shirt in every class, always showing off some comic book logo or musical artist, I would have been a huge hypocrite if advocated for NO LOGOS. Instead I advocated for making conscious choices and owning one's choices. After all, wearing a T-shirt with something printed on it is choosing to be a walking, traveling, interacting billboard for whatever "brand" is displayed on the shirt. I talked about why I wanted to promote this comic book or that musical artist, and I asked the to question if they really wanted to pay their own money to advertise that beer, that school. or that clothing company. Because that's what this is all about: we spend our own money to advertise for other corporate interests.

The above set of shirts from last week show that I paid (or was gifted) about $140 worth of clothing to advertise a podcast, a TV cartoon character, a VERTIGO comic book, a phrase from a set of fantasy books, a comic book character in a logo style of a TV show from the 1960s, a magic company, and a fictional organization in a science fiction TV show. I am purposefully not naming them all in my list to see if you can figure them all out. If you care that is.

So the question is: why would I choose to spend my own money to be an advertisement?

I mean if I am going to pay to have the privilege to advertise I better have some damn good reasons for doing so, and thus I will explore these ideas more in tomorrow's WHY T-SHIRTS post. Also, postscript, it is possible that I will add to this posting after I publish it. After all, I added I sentence to yesterday's, which means I should post the entire WHY T-SHIRTS? essay all together when it's complete.

WEEKLY COMICS LIST

I gave a lot of thought to keeping The Walking Dead in my number one slot. I almost dropped it. This week made for many tough choices. I loved the first issue of Black Widow (even though I suspect Marvel of trying to compete with Image's Velvet), and as you can see, it jumped from the seventh slot two weeks ago to number two and almost number one.

Excited for the new Invaders comic and with good reviews by some tough readers at the comic book store, I log in the All New Invaders comic at number three. The rest of the top six-seven all look good and were close calls in the rankings. Batman falling to ninth may change as I start to work my way through the stack.

I am proud to have cleared the back log enough that there are no issues from this week that go straight to back log.

And on the strength of many recommendations, I am buying Unwritten to give it a go. I just finished Nowhere Men last night and added it to my large stack of comics and graphic novels that I want to review on my blog. For now, just this week's list.

Check out Sense of Doubt blog

Hi. Thanks for reading. I closed out daily transmission on March 21st, day 365 of my T-shirt blog-tastic extravaganza spectacular. Currently, I am enjoying a hiatus of total non-transmission or publication for an as yet undetermined period of time. As of the posting of this note (and it's no April Fool's) on 1404.01, I have some unfinished T-shirt blog entries, which will be posted over the next two weeks. After some more blog vacation hiatus, I will resume T-shirt posts on a regular basis, also as yet to be determined (weekly? Twice monthly?) to finish blogging about all the T-shirts that were not featured in the blog year. MEANWHILE, I am posting weekly and somewhat at random over on SENSE OF DOUBT BLOG.

Over there, you will find THE WEEKLY COMIC LIST, the features of occasional T-SHIRTS I AM WEARING THIS WEEK, book

reviews, comic book reviews, and other popular culture nonsense as I have been for a year now but all will go up at SENSE OF DOUBT BLOG and some will direct back here to 365 T-SHIRTS. Ultimately, I will begin Internet publication of my fiction, primarily the comic book satire episodic story called POP! among other projects. So, in summary, 365 T-SHIRTS will continue though intermittently. SENSE OF DOUBT BLOG will host my main blog presence and fiction writing as well as links to any T-shirt posts shared here. I hope you will continue to follow me in my journey as a writer and a content provider. Thank you for your kind attention and time you have spent with me on this and/or any other day this year. I am humbled and blessed by your readership. - chris tower, blogger, originated 1404.01

SiJ - Daguérose

The Catalanian Tapes

ZENИTH

Original Introductory Text

Maybe it's narcissism. I have been wanting to increase my blog presence, and I wanted something that was easy to update, much like my frequent "Facebookery." Hence, 365 T-Shirts. I have a lot of T-Shirts. Some may say that I am somewhat compulsive about buying T-Shirts, owning them, wearing them. Earlier this year (as the blog would have been better started on January 1st), I wondered if I had 365 different T-Shirts. I don't know. Now, obviously, I could count them, but where is the fun in that? Better to post a picture of one per day for an entire year to test whether or not I run out of shirts before 365 days have passed. This hobby means taking and displaying a lot of pictures of me, which is not a prospect that I find thrilling. But the pride of embracing my geeky side and my obvious egotism make for a fine marriage in what I hope will be seen as a whimsical blog for occasional viewing, if not even a regular check in for many of my friends new and old. Thus, I present 365 T-shirts, launched on 1303.22 or as others call it March 22, 2013. Now watch as I fail to keep it going for even a week...